Regardless of good will or bad faith, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ decision to go without national consensus to early presidential and parliamentary elections was divisive, counterproductive and conforms to U.S.-Israeli plans to remove the Islamic Resistance Movement “Hamas” from power or pressure it into accepting what its rival Fatah had accepted: A peace process on their dictated terms and conditions.

“I have decided to call for early presidential and parliamentary elections,” Abbas said in a televised 90-minute speech on Saturday, in an effort to break a political nine-month deadlocked dialogue mainly bilateral between Fatah, the former ruling movement, and the incumbent Hamas. “Let’s return to the people to have their say, and let them be the judge.”

Early election was among several options floated with the aim of outmaneuvering Hamas including a referendum, declaring a state of emergency, calling for early legislative election, forming an emergency government or a government of independents or technocrats.

Chairman of the Higher Committee of the Central Election Commission (CEC), Hanna M. Nasser, said after a meeting with Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Sunday that the CEC needs 110 days after the issuance of the relevant presidential decree, which has yet to be issued, to organize the election; the CEC decided five days earlier to start updating the voter's list as from mid-January 2007.

Close aide to Abbas and member of the Executive Committee of the
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Yasser Abed Rabbo, said he
expected the election to take place in the next three months, but Saeb
Erekat, another senior aide and chief negotiator, said they might not
happen until June.

Accordingly a time space is still available to mediate the Palestinian
divide; Abbas’ decision could be used as a pressure tactic to prod the
political protagonists into a common ground either for a consensus to
form a national unity government, in which case the elections become
irrelevant, or a consensus to go to the polls, which precludes the
slide into civil war.

Abbas could be once again maneuvering to pressure Hamas into giving in
to the Israeli-U.S. conditions. “My aim,” he said, “is a national unity
government to lift this crisis and siege.”This
is, after all, the same Abbas who once threatened to hold a referendum
on the prisoners' document and changed his mind; and now he is
threatening early elections and could change his mind.

However he hardly finished his speech than his decision backfired.
Hamas legislators and cabinet ministers had boycotted Abbas’ speech and
Hamas leaders immediately called his declaration illegal and tantamount
to a coup.

The Hamas-led Palestinian government of Haniyeh on Sunday refused
Abbas’ decision as “unconstitutional” and condemned his speech as
divisive. Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar said that the call for new
elections is illegal: “We will not participate … If he (Abbas) is
tired, he should resign and we’ll have a presidential election.”
Haniyeh’s senior adviser, Ahmed Yousef, was more blunt: “Abu Mazen
(Abbas) is not part of the solution anymore. He is part of the problem
now,” he said. Reiterating an earlier similar warning by Zahar, Yousef
had warned in Gaza on Saturday: “Today what we have heard from Abu
Mazen is a call … for a civil war.”

But Abbas on Saturday played down the warning: “The removal of the
government is not a recipe for civil war, as suggested by Zahar. Firing
the government is a constitutional right that I can exercise when I
want.” Many political experts, even in his own Fatah movement, believe
he only has the right to fire the current prime minister and cabinet,
but under the Palestinian Basic Law, only the legislature can dissolve
itself, these experts say, according to The New York Times.

Ahmed Baher, the deputy speaker of the Hamas-dominated Palestinian
Legislature Council (PLC), said that Abbas “can’t dismiss the
legislative council. Such a decision violates the basic law.” The PLC
is like the government paralyzed and could not convene on Sunday. The
Palestinian Basic Law, which acts as a constitution, has no provision
for calling early elections. Fatah officials say Abbas can do so by
issuing a presidential decree. Hamas says that would be illegal.

Abbas’ decision however has only escalated the mutual incitement and
the war of words is exacerbating an already tense situation, which
spelled over to the streets in massive pro and con demonstrations
across the West Bank and Gaza Strip and threatens to turn into armed
mass expression of support or protest, the ideal environment for a
flare up into a full-fledged civil war.

Abbas cited several reasons behind his decision: The divide arising
from a two-head political system should be resolved, the national
dialogue has reached an impasse and he has to act, the dual
U.S.-Israeli economic siege on both Abbas and Hamas should be lifted
sooner than later by a government mandated to do so by conforming to
the conditions set by Israel and adopted by the Quartet of the U.S.,
U.N., EU and Russia, and to end the security chaos that has claimed 320
Palestinian lives, a figure reported by MP and former foreign minister
Nabil Shaath to be 400 during the past three months.

Contributing Factors

On all accounts Abbas’ decision is proving counterproductive. It was
advised by the U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when she met
the Palestinian president in Jericho at the end of November and
recommended by the PLO executive committee earlier this month.

The PLO recommendation could be a bad advice out of a good will to
break through an impasse, although the PLO represents one side of the
Palestinian divide vis-à-vis Hamas, but Rice’s advice could not be
judged except as given in bad faith.

Palestinian polarization into a brink of civil war is being fueled by
several factors, but mainly by the active and direct U.S., Israeli and
European contribution to the divide by taking sides; this factor is too
influential to allow in more constructive international influences. The
absence of Arab mediation and the Arab League divide over several
Middle Eastern hot issues is another important contributing factor.
Internally the marginal role of factions other than Fatah and Hamas and
the non-existence of a third mainstream party that could provide a
balancing power to bridge the divide is a third factor.

The Israeli government, the U.S. administration and the European Union
welcomed Abbas’ move and pledged support; at the same time the
Jordanian minister of information, an Egyptian statement, the U.N.
Secretary General and Russia’s foreign ministry as well as Syria and
Iran urged Palestinians to preserve their national unity and to
de-escalate.

Israel and the U.S. are not neutral in the inter-Palestinian crisis.
They were inciting the PLO and its autonomous Palestinian Authority
(PA) to take on armed resistance to the Israeli 40-year old occupation
long before Hamas assumed power. Their incitement was fleshed with more
muscle after the Islamic movement came to power through ballots, which
they themselves financed and monitored. Bringing in the EU to join them
they imposed a devastating economic siege on both heads of the
Palestinian leadership. However they spared their political and
diplomatic siege to one head, the Hamas-led government, and selectively
streamed in only humanitarian aid through the other head, which they
continued to flesh with more muscle.

According to USINFO, Rice has said its administration will request from
the Congress additional funding to support the mission of the U.S.
security envoy, Army Major General Keith Dayton, who is leading an
effort to train and equip Palestinian security forces controlled by
Abbas since November last year; nonetheless Rice blamed the recent
violence on Hamas’ “inability to govern” and White House spokeswoman
Jeanie Mamo denied on Friday that Washington was meddling in
Palestinian “internal affairs!”

The U.S.-Israeli blockade did not start with the election of Hamas on
January 25 but was imposed on the PA since the collapse of the Camp
David summit talks in 2000; late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was a
prominent casualty. The hundreds of millions of dollars in tax monies
owed to the PA were withheld by Israel before that. Even the Arab
League financial pledges were not enough to bail out the salaries of
the PA employees and the PA was compelled to borrow more than $600
million from local banks before Hamas came to power.

In fact both heads of the Palestinian leadership are now under siege;
the aim did not change since 2000: Give in to the will of the Israeli
occupation or starve to yielding!

Regional Spillover Inevitable

The accelerating slide of the Palestinian divide into the brink of a
low key civil war is a direct result of U.S. shirking of its
responsibilities vis-à-vis the regional peace process, its unbalanced
and biased foreign policy in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, its
unwavering commitment to its strategic alliance with Israel at the
expense of its Arab strategic allies who have proved their worth much
better than the Jewish state in many regional conflicts during the past
decades, and its preoccupation with other Middle East issues that are
less central to the security of the region, which is pivotal and more
vital for U.S. interests.

Washington is currently preoccupied with coordinating an “arch
of moderation,” which it hopes would lump up together Arab moderates
and Israel to stand up to the so-called Syrian-Iranian “axis of evil,”
but is shooting its plan in the legs by dictating to the Palestinians
and meddling in their internal affairs. How could any Arab state
subscribe to such a scheme when the U.S. fails to provide for the
success of the long-awaited and much-trumpeted Abbas summit meeting
with the Israeli Prime minister Ehud Olmert?

Both U.S. allies Jordan and Egypt tried to add the resumption
of the Palestinian –Israeli peace process to the agenda of President
George W. Bush during his last visit to Amman; both hoped Bush could
arrange for Abbas-Olmert meeting or at least would meet Abbas to pave
the way for such a summit; instead he sent Rice to meet the Palestinian
president in Jericho, where she denied him even promises to secure
Israeli reciprocity to sustain the renewed Palestinian
unilaterally-declared and honored two-year old truce and gave him in
bad faith her bad advice to outmaneuver Hamas by going to polls,
knowing beforehand her advice would only deepen the Palestinian divide
and polarization.

It was a counterproductive advice. Sustaining the Palestinian
divide and allowing it to slide into civil war would only defer the
peace process indefinitely and prolong the suffering of the Palestinian
people, but would not also spare the Arab as well as the Israeli
neighbors the expected repercussions.

A full-blown civil war in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
inevitably “would also boil over to us,” Ron Ben Yishai wrote in the
Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronot on Dec. 15; a civil war would also thwart
any attempt to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian crisis through
negotiations and would almost certainly lead to the most radical
elements taking over Palestinian society.

Egypt and Jordan may also be hit by unfriendly ricochets from
this civil war, so they, just like Israel, have a clear interest in
stopping this deterioration at this point before it completely spirals
out of control, Ben Yishai warned.

How could such a development contribute to defusing the already
explosive regional situation to serve U.S. interests as envisaged by
the Baker-Hamilton report is a question for Bush and Rice to answer!

*Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Ramallah, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.